A woman staring at a slot machine, her eyes glazed by the rays emanating from the screen, widening slightly as she takes a deep drag on her cigarette and pushes the button for one more play.
Another lady, dressed in a tattered shift and sitting in a wheelchair, stretching up almost to the limit of her reach, feeding in nickels with zombie-like regularity. The blues and hues of her video screen play in delicate nuance across her mottled face. The veins crisscrossing her nose reading like tea leaves of a destiny of despair.
Every now and then these peoples' eyes would gleam, and you would see a brief flicker of hope as they won back five or ten credits. Most of the machines read in credits now, and your only clue as to the denomination of the money you're pouring down the drain is the big sign on top. The screen itself just encourages you to play play play. Video coins drop into an imaginary video bucket when you win, and the amplified sound of whistles, bells, and clanks ring out through the casino floor. Winner WINNER WINNER ! No Microsoft "I pulled a boner" squawks coming from these little computers. Just: Try Again? Bet Max? Double Down? Double Up?
The shabby people on the nickel fringes gradually give way to the more well dressed people in the quarter slots which transition into the stylish folk at the dollar slots and the posh habitues of the actual real life honest to goodness gaming tables, where the stakes start at five dollars and continue to the stratosphere, where everyone hopes for a hot shot that'll send em to a heaven of riches.
People talk about Las Vegas as a pit of greed. But it's not really greed. It's an abundance of hope. The hope of everyone human for an easier road to comfort. Cause that's what wealth is all about to the both the unwashed many and the dry cleaned few. Wealth is the ticket to the exit door from the day to day grind of hacking out a subsistence. Wealth is the perceived key to happiness. And the pursuit of happiness is the unspoken independent declaration of every one of the poor misguided gambling addicts littering the floors of the casinos.
So grab another cheap beer, fire up another cigarette and plug into your machine. The rollercoaster to riches is about to leave the station.
Final image:
Frequent offenders are encouraged to join casino "clubs" for easier accounting of "comps"; those bones the casinos throw out to keep the gambling dogs clustered in the right pack. Everything from rooms to meals to "plays" (No, not the Shakespeare type, plays on a machine) are "comped" to people who run a lot of dough through the monetary pasta maker. As part of their club membership, many of these folk are given little magnetic card dohickeys that just plug into the machines. Saves all that feeding in quarters nonsense. Kind of like phone cards or hotel room keys. Which, need I say, is another way the big boys remove actual money from the perceptions of the people losing all of it. Once again, you're just cycling credits. Not real hard cash.
People naturally want to keep track of their special cards, and, what with the drinking and the pickpockets and the general aura of chaos that permeates the floor of a casino, many people have attached little bungee cords to their cards to help them do so. Which they then attach to themselves. My first day in Las Vegas I wandered by all these people with one end of a cord apparently directly plugged into a machine, (the card being fully inserted and therefore invisible) and the other end appearing to come directly out of their chest. "Woh," I thought "cyber-gamblers." Or is that Gam-borgs?
Too bad the tubes didn't just stick right in a vein. That way, the casinos could really suck them dry. Then the tired ladies with the rolling change carts could just trundle the desiccated husks to the buffet kitchen.
"I don't understand why the food is so cheap here, Honey."
